Mar 6, 2015

Baked sweet potato loaded with zesty black beans, melted cheese, salsa with a dollop of cream. What can be better than a 20 minute meal!

Today's recipe is a guest post from The Picky Eater. I met Anjali in San Francisco last year; she's a sweet blogger who I instantly connected with, she is also a vegetarian and shared this delicious (yes, I tested this myself and loved it!) recipe with us, perfect for meatless Monday!

Hi Everyone! My name is Anjali Shah and I blog over at The Picky Eater, where I write about healthy recipes and easy-to-make family meals. I test all of my recipes on my “fast food loving husband,” who, prior to meeting me, ate a diet of frozen pizzas and Taco Bell, so any recipe that makes it on to my blog is “husband approved”!

I’m so excited to be a guest blogger today on Gina’s site! Ever since I met her at the Foodbuzz Conference last year and saw the amazing photographs and wonderful recipes on her blog, I’ve been a fan – and I’m so honored to be a part of this blog and meet all of you.

One of my favorite things to do in the kitchen is to makeover comfort foods into healthy versions that taste amazing, are full of flavor and feel just like the original.

Today I’d like to share one of my favorite recipes – my Loaded Baked Potato Makeover. My healthy swaps include: sweet potatoes instead of russet, “loaded” toppings like black beans and veggies sautéed with spices, and a dollop of cream (which is my favorite swap – 0% Greek Yogurt for sour cream!) The husband usually can’t tell the difference, especially when I spice up the yogurt with some taco seasoning.

This meal is delicious and takes only 20 minutes to make, which is why I love making it after a long day at work – I know I’ll have something yummy in my stomach in the same amount of time it would take to pick up takeout. The husband loved it too, and it has since become a staple weeknight meal in our house. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Poke holes in the potato with a fork, cook on your microwave’s potato setting until potatoes are soft and cooked through (about 8-10 minutes on high for 4 potatoes). If you don't have a microwave, bake about 45 minutes at 400°F.

Slice the potato lengthwise down the middle or as I did in the photo, use a fork to pierce the top in an oval shape, then remove the top of each potato. Top with 2 tbsp shredded cheese, 1/3 cup of black bean mixture, 2 tbsp Greek yogurt mixture and 2 tbsp salsa of salsa. Enjoy!

Anjali Shah is a food writer and owner of The Picky Eater, a healthy food and lifestyle blog. Follow her onTwitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Google+.

99 comments
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Hmmm... Being from the south, I've always ONLY eaten my sweet potatoes loaded with butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and/or marshmallows. Last week, I tried mine sliced and cooked in olive oil and sea salt for the first time ever and LOVED it. This looks amazing! I am trying to consider sweet potato and salsa together, though. It's a mental thing. LOL Looks so good!

Right there with ya, girl! This southern girl likes her sweet potatoes cooked in biscuits or covered in chopped pecans and brown sugar. I know that butternut squash and black beans are awesome together as well as pumpkin in chili, so maybe these will be just as delicious? I'm going with yes!

Lol I am right there with both of you ladies! This southern chick likes her tea iced and sweet and her sweet potatoes loaded with the traditional southern staples. I'm not as adventurous as you two seem to be so I'm taking baby steps lol. I think I'll start with sweet potato fries first and just branch off from there.

This sounds and looks SO good! I love sweet potatoes and although I am the only one in the family who does I am STILL going to try this. :) If the rest of the family doesn’t like it...then they can have a PBJ for dinner! haha Thanks!

FYI, Gina, your site loads impressively fast. With all the cool stuff like a stellar index and search function and all the photographs, I was surprised by how well-constructed the site is, for ease of use and speed as well as the best content. I hope the spam post a bit ago by anonymous gets lost.

I was so happy when I saw this in my RSS reader today. I had just gotten in from lots of yard work and was dreading making dinner tonight b/c I was so tired. I had everything on hand and this was delicious! I have been getting tired of sweet potatoes and this had such great flavors. The husband wasn't too happy when I told him I didn't make a meal with meat in it but then he did admit it was very good.

I am so happy to see this recipe. Since coming to Skinny Taste, I have become vegetarian. Unfortuantely for me many of the delicious looking recipes are designed for meat eaters. I had been wanting Gina's potato skin's that had meat, but now I have a great alternative in this one. Thanks so much.

Was a hit with the husband, the 5 year old and enen the 3 year old. I forgot to buy more salsa this week, so I just chopped some tomatoes for the top. We had some leftover guacamole, so I added that too on the side. So so so so so good. One potato is just the right amount.

I tried this out tonight and I'm in LOVE! One of my New Year's goals is to start an online journal chronicling my neverending struggle to control my budget and the size of my butt. This one is a winner for both B's. I will caution all to weigh your potato. You can blow up that calorie count if your potato is too big. I had to freeze some because the 3 huge potatoes I baked ended out yielding 9 servings! The only substitution I made was using cooking spray instead of olive oil...this dish weighed in at under 300 calories using the ingredients I acutally used (according to my fitness pal, using 4 oz. of sweet potato). You can't get much more budget friendly and delicious than this dish. Thanks so much.

Just finished this for dinner, and it was awesome!!!! DH really liked it and he is not a stuft potato fan, nor nacho, but he really really liked this. I think I might have used more of the yogurt sauce than called for but oh well... =P Thanks so much!!!

I made this tonight and it was delicious! The whole family loved it! I just made regular potatoes for the ones who don't like sweet. We baked large potatoes in the oven at 400 degrees for over 1 1/4 hours. I had a side of Guacamole too!Thanks for another great recipe!

I just made this recipe with a russet potato and it was awesome and way more filling than it looks! As for how many points -- well like another commenter said, it depends on the size of russet potato. I calculated it to 5 points plus.

This was really good. I was a little worried about how the flavors would go with the sweet potato, but my fears were unfounded. Also, I baked my sweet potato instead of using the microwave and I ate the entire thing. I will definitely make this again!

This was really, really good! Even my hubs, who isn't much of a sweet potato fan, liked it (til he got to the very bottom)! My teenager loved it, even w/o any meat!! I don't like the preservatives, sodium and chemicals that's in seasoning mixes, so I made something similar that was mixed w/the beans and put it into the sour cream. All good~

I am NOT a sweet potato fan, but I love texmex so thought I'd give this a try. It was WONDERFUL! The flavors blended beautifully and the sweet potato fit right in. I had to keep checking the calorie count to make sure I wasn't missing something. I left out the cheese to keep it a bit lighter, but I didn't miss it. Already pinned this one into my favorite recipe board on Pinterest!

Made this for dinner last night and it was delicious! Even my husband liked it and he never eats sweet potatoes unless there loaded with butter and brown sugar. This will definitely be a regular in our house from now on. Can't wait to have the leftovers for lunch! Thanks Gina!

Wanted to let you know this was fantastic, my favorite of all the SkinnyTaste recipes! I made it last week, and even leftovers were just as delicious. I didn't go meatless, and used extra-lean ground turkey with some of the taco seasoning in the meat. My husband hates traditional quick taco meals, but he loved these! Not sure if I'll ever eat ground taco meat on a regular shell again. We also baked the potatoes with olive oil and sea salt, and ate the skin.

I just tried this for lunch and it was DELISH!! And quite filling. I made a little dessert out of the scooped out sweet potato, by adding few drops of fat free half and half, pie spice and sweetener (my choice was dash of brown sugar) ... it was like eating a crustless sweet potato pie :-). Good recipe

O.EM.GEE. Words can not even describe how delicious these baked potatoes were. My brother hates veggies so I gave him less of the beans, peppers and onions and he complained he didn't get as much as the rest of my family! The yogurt sauce was a major hit, in my opinion it tasted better than sour cream would have. Not even kidding my mom asked me to make these again tonight. Here goes round two!

These were nothing short of amazing. I always test recipes out myself before making them for others and this was just a leap of faith sense I am used to butter cinnamon and sugar with my sweet potatoes. I absolutely loved it and I posted pictures on my instagram of the oeey goodness I call Sweet Potato Fiesta!

I made this for dinner a couple nights ago and have been eating leftovers at work! I had made 4 big sweet potatoes for only 2 people. To the listed ingredients I added ground turkey breast, carrots, and substituted enchilada sauce instead of salsa because I had 3/4 of a jar to use up. I also didn't add all the seasonings since I'd used enchilada sauce. This was AMAZING!!

WOW! I have been wanting to try this recipe for awhile now and it was amazing! Very fast to make, and it was perfect for lunch. I think this is my favorite Skinnytaste recipe so far. Thank you for all the great meal ideas!

I made these for our family last night (with regular potatoes). And Oh My Gosh. This was sooo good and so filling. Everyone, even my picky 8 yo son loved it. Thank you for posting. This will be rotated into our meals frequently. My hubby likes his meat, but he really liked this dish! Thank you!

Made this for dinner tonight... totally awesome and would eat it again and make sure that my friends know how good it is. Skinnytaste.com is my new favorite website to get my low calorie - Weight Watcher's recipes on. Thank you so much for making this easy for me to loose weight.

My 7 year old and I loved this. I just scooped the potato filling out for him, kinda like mashed. My husband liked the topping a lot but *hates* sweet potatoes...I thought I could fool him! I'll definitely make it again, just with a russet for him.

I'm a bit confused as to what is happening here--this exact recipe was posted several years ago. It's a great recipe, but why is it at the top of the blog again with no explanation? I'm a regular reader of this blog and have no problem with recycled content (especially a recipe as delicious as this one) but a little transparency would be nice.

Lovely! I'm always looking for new potato recipes to try. I recently found Paprika, check out my latest side dish of Smoked Paprika Roasted Potatoes! So yummy! http://www.melamora.com/2015/03/smoked-paprika-roasted-potatoes.html